fromthemouthofmoi

  I recently found this academic paper while going through things in my home. It is a book review of Dorothy West's novel, The Wedding. It was written sometime between 1994-97 when I was working with the Dean of Empire State College,  James H. Case , who served as my mentor. I do not know how to put footnotes in Blogger so I will be using asterisks with an associated number which can be found at the end of the piece.  Two days ago I closed Dorothy West's book, The Wedding, and fell straight to sleep. I had a dream. I was out shopping but had an appointment with E's therapist later in the day. I was supposed to meet E there.  I called twice to say I would be late and finally arrived when the session was over. When I arrive, E and the therapist are friendly. The therapist tells us of a party we might be interested in going to later that very evening. E and I agree to go. We arrived at the party and I immediately split to go sit with the gay men and begin to yuck it up...

I have often dreamt that I was Chinese. I have had many dreams in which I am speaking Chinese or that I work in an opium den at the turn of the century in New York City's Chinatown. The following is a full dream I had back in the early 1980's. I woke up and immediately and wrote the following down. The title of this piece is what I gave to the dream at the time. I didn't know that I was Chinese until I came outside and looked into the eyes of a God. I didn't know that the young woman I loved was my daughter until my husband, a man I never knew, strapped her to his lap and went before a firing squad to die. I didn't know anything consciously. It began in the evening at a strange party. Music, food, people mingling and reenacting all the usual party maneuvers. The sound system was outside the windows, which were thirty stories up, suspended by heavy cables, being whipped about by high winds. Young hippies were crawling around on the apparatus trying to outdo the last ...

 This post was inspired by my dear friend Sue, a psychoanalyst on the west coast of the US. It was a conversation we recently had where she asked me how I control or deal with being bipolar. She said that my experience was important and that I should write about it. So here we go. I’ve been in therapy on and off for 50 years. Periodically I return to therapy when I need to tease something out that is going on with me where I want a second voice. In another conversation with Sue I asked her if someone could be given a diagnosis at one time and with therapy work through and out of that diagnosis into either another diagnosis or to more awareness, self reflection and control over the things that led you to therapy in the first place. She responded with an emphatic: Yes. Think of it this way: A diagnosis helps to focus your awareness to go further towards your healing and self awareness; gathering self respect along the way. Your awareness expands within the diagnosis and with that exp...

When I see my hands with nails long and feminized  I imagine them weaving their way  through the hairs on a man’s chest delighting in the contrast  Me Jane, You Tarzan Then my nails snag and get filed to a much more practical length  Enough with this daydreaming! There is work to be done. 

  Everyone should know someone like Bob. When you think about all he did in his life, and the vastly varied types of people he knew you begin to really see how special he was. He was loyal, he was funny, he showed disapproval on his face that was kind of comical but you got the point, he helped kids with their homework, he was fatherly, caring, incredibly sensitive, — I once made him cry because I was being a bitch and had become infuriated with hm for being late to something insignificant and now forgotten, but mostly I will say he was steadfast and loyal.  I had just turned twenty-one and was living in Portland, Oregon and decided that I was now of legal age and therefore eligible for a ‘grown-up’ job. I applied to work at his establishment, Bogart’s Joint. Bogart’s was in the middle of nowhere at that time in the sense that it was surrounded by factories. The lunchtime crowd were all blue collar workers who were in and out. Once the lunch time crowd was over we then got the...

1/9/1998 Last night Max woke me up with his barking. I was spending a long overdue week out on the sound and was dead tired. My eyes opened to the sight of what seemed an unfamiliar ceiling. For a moment I had forgotten where I was. As I adjusted my eyes I could hear Max running back and forth across the deck at the side of the house. I knew that whatever he was excited about must be in the direction of the dock. The only way on or off my little hide-a-way was by boat and I wasn't expecting anyone, or for that matter, wanting to see anyone. I didn't feel like getting out of bed --that's for sure-- but I also knew that I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep until Max saw to it that I had sufficiently checked things out to his satisfaction. Max was the type of dog that thought he was my peer. Not just any peer mind you but the type of person who imagined himself more efficient than you. At this hour I felt like a worn out dog heeding my master's plea. I put on my paj...

Moira. There are only a few given names that one can use playing Words With Friends -- Moira is one such name. Moira means fate, destiny. Moirai, The Fates: Clotho, the Spinner, Lachesis, the Allotter and Atropos, the Unturnable. In Greek mythology they were above all other Gods. Clotho holds a distaff in her hand, Lachesis, a spindle, and dear Atropos wields a scissor. From inception Clotho spins your upcoming life, Lachesis weaves the life you are to lead, and Atropos ends your life. Neither sister can interfere with the work of the others. They are the women that decide your destiny. Your fate. The Fates have been good to me. They gave me friends, and enough to eat, after much time they gave me a house to call my own. I've had endless laughter, and the tears and agony they gave me always had an exit I could find. Those three sisters gave me a rollercoaster of a ride!  When I arrived in Mexico it was the very first time anyone could ever, upon seeing my name written, pronounce my...

Decades ago I had my uterus out. It was riddled with huge fibroids and I bled constantly. My uterus had been a nightmare for me. I have no regrets that it is no longer providing me with pain. Before surgery I asked my doctor if I could have it once it was removed. She game me an emphatic, No. I then asked her if she would at least take a picture of it and to this she agreed. I never thought about why I wanted it so persistently until the other day, when speaking with Sue, she asked me what it meant to me to have a picture. I was quick to answer: Because it was a part of me and I wanted my parts with me. I wanted to see what had buggered me for so many years. It was mine and not the property of a hospital.  I demand to be whole. I want to be whole. I want to leave this world whole. I want my bits with me when I go. I've heard from enough professionals that any treatment I might engage in will not leave me with any quality time worth the effort. I have no intentions of having my guts...

Nil has encouraged me to come back here. I haven't felt like writing here for ages. In some ways, I guess, I know that some of what I might write will be some of the last things I write and that sort of tangles me up a bit because it creates a type of writers stage fright. I think these remaining posts will just be less focused.  There are things I want to write to my brothers, final things, that I'm not looking for a response to. It's just what I wish for them. I feel like I'm leaving them in a mess, not my mess mind you, but a mess created by our mother, that once learned as children, they can't seem to unlearn the dynamic. My family behaves like that television series Succession. A quagmire of competition, resentment and secrets. My eldest brother once filmed our mother, and asked her why she had so many kids. On film her reply was that she wanted us to have someone to talk to. Her example given, if I remember correctly, was something along the lines of: You know...

The other day I woke to a news article/video on The BBC: The Dumping Ground for Unwanted Clothes  that left me wondering what in God's name was the point of recycling? Don't get me wrong, I am not against recycling but I probably don't do it for the reasons you do. To save the planet? Good luck with that! A while back someone made an offhand comment to me regarding their 'travel footprint' and having some concerns about their contribution, through air travel, towards global warming. The ever present bubble over my head which in this case trailed an ellipsis, asked: I wonder how hard it is to join the Amish... I secretly wondered how 'guilt' had become so complicated. As a Catholic I was like, really? Are people really going to confession now and confessing they went to Florida for the winter on a plane? I am saving my feelings of guilt for other stuff that seems way more important than my travel footprint or how many plastic bags I use. I am only interested ...

Leaving Facebook, deactivating my profile, feels like a relief. All of the people I was friends with are wonderful people in their own right. I truly cherish them all. But some of them I honestly believe I will never hear from again not because we are not friends but because Facebook has trained people out of communication. If Facebook is not there it will never occur to some to write a letter or send an email or FaceTime me. It's scary. What I found to be troublesome was how much FB pressured people to know this person, or join this group or to get involved with things outside of your group of friends. On the surface that looks all community-like, harmless and chummy but the fact of the matter is those other places on Facebook and those other people I may know are really fucked up places to be with really fucked up people who take angry and hate to a new level. Those other places is where crazy lives. I dipped my toe into a local group in my community run by Yucatecans.  I thought...

Imagine if you will a group of artists that come together, sometimes virtually, sometimes face to face to work on a project. Imagine further that at other times, in other spaces, other artists will again gather to create. Imagine that the house that they create in is called Tral Neu.  Guest artists, in alphabetical order, are: Richard Anderson : Is a London based artist who combines music with visual art under the name, This Is The Bridge . His work explores dystopian/social themes and urban landscapes with a particular interest in brut architecture. Gran Bankrott (aka Gran): Is described as a Viennese Wunderkind experimentalist. Formally with the experimental punk group Dot Dash, most recently recording under the name Starship Skysaw and one half of the S/M performance duo, 2 Pigs Under 1 Umbrella.  Moira Kirstin Boyd: Is a former New Yorker living in The Yucatan. She is a formally trained bel canto singer and has collaborated with other artists within the underground music ...